THIS TREATISE, which is grown up under your lordship’s
eye, and has ventured into the world by your order,
does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship
for that protection which you several years since
promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great
soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to
cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in
print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the
reader’s fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired
for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody
is more likely to procure me that than your lordship,
who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance
with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship
is known to have so far advanced your speculations
in the most abstract and general knowledge of things,
beyond the ordinary reach or common methods, that
your allowance and approbation of the design of this
Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned
without reading, and will prevail to have those parts a
little weighted, which might otherwise perhaps be